For
the past week or two, I’ve been asking people to tell me about what grace means
to them. Several of the responses I’ve
received are sprinkled throughout this sermon.
But, I begin with just one response.
Earlier this week Lane and I went to a park for our weekly time of
theological reflection. We talked about
our understandings of grace. While we
were sitting there, discussing grace, a woman with a dog came by. We had a brief chat with the woman and I
asked her what her dog’s name was.
“Grace,” she answered. Lane and I
glanced at each other. What a
coincidence! Amazed, I asked the woman
why she had chosen that name for her dog.
She replied, “Oh, you know, for the obvious reasons.”
***
Obviously! Grace is one of those theological words that
resist simple and easy definition. Its
meaning crosses boundaries; its nature is hard to define. One member of the worship committee commented
that when she thinks about grace, she thinks about something that seems to
float, something with a light and airy quality.
In other words, the opposite of something solid and distinct. David Blanchard’s words from our reading
agree. “Grace just sneaks up on us and
often steals away before we know what happened…
Grace is sometimes beyond our understanding. But from time to time it pays us each a
visit.”
This
morning’s sermon is going to first share some ways of thinking about
grace. Then, we’re going to layer on
some Unitarian Universalist theology in order to deepen our thinking about
grace. Finally, we’re going to go beyond
theology and talk about the ways grace can and does intersect with our lives.
A
tentative working definition of grace might say that grace is favor or fortune
that comes to us unbidden, that is impossible for us to do anything to merit or
deserve. That I’m aware of, we’ve had
three children and two dogs named Grace in this church community. One member of our church tells me that she
named her dog Grace and she literally meant it.
Dogs, she explained, give us love, companionship, and devotion beyond
our capacity to earn it. They look past
our shortcomings and blemishes, our foibles and failings, and favor us
unconditionally.
Etymologically,
grace is related to expressions of thankfulness. We might mention the Spanish gracias, the Italian grazie, and the Latin gratia.
There is a clear connection between grace and gratitude. One step removed is the Latin gratus, which means pleasing, and there
we find words like gratifying and gratuity.
Or, take the opposite. Even if we
are not sure about the workings of grace, we know what is meant by a disgrace,
an ingrate, a persona non-gratis.
The
idea of grace conjures up an awareness that many things in our lives can be
thought of as accidents. The poet Jane
Kenyon, in her poem “Otherwise,” writes, “I got out of bed / on two strong
legs. / It might have been / otherwise.
I ate / cereal, sweet / milk, ripe, flawless / peach. It might / have been otherwise.”
It
might have been otherwise. If your life ever
brings you into contact with people whose suffering seems overwhelming, you
might have repeated this phrase to yourself, or perhaps a variation of it, such
as the phrase, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Have you ever uttered a phrase like that to
yourself? In my mind, I rewind the
script of my life, back to my young adulthood, back to my adolescence, back to
my childhood, or back even to my birth.
In my mind, I replay my life with different choices or different
fortunes, different opportunities or different circumstances. I imagine my own life otherwise. It might have been otherwise. There,but for the grace of God go I.
For
me, one time when I’ve definitely said this to myself is right after I’ve
visited someone in jail. I have had
occasion to make such visits as your minister, but fortunately, not often. “There but for the grace of God go I” is also
a saying that comes to the forefront of my mind when serving at the soup
kitchen, or officiating at the difficult and tragic memorial service. It would apply to the refugee camp, to the
city ravaged by the natural disaster, wherever there is wholesale suffering in
our world.
For
religious liberals, understanding grace in these terms may seem
problematic. After all, the idea that
God has a plan that involves some being chosen to have a good life and many
being chosen to have miserable lives is repulsive. And, it is also a copout. A good portion of human suffering is not due
to chance in any meaningful way. I
return to the experience of visiting someone in jail. I find myself thinking of such visits that
I’ve made to visit people in jail because I’ve recently been reading a book
about race and our nation’s brutal system of mass incarceration. The book argues, convincingly, that the
criminal justice system is designed to be a form of social control that
systematically disenfranchises people of color.
(I may come back to this book in a sermon later this year.) Seen from this perspective, the larger
societal perspective, grace, as it is commonly understood, is not all that
relevant to the conversation. Systems
of oppression that have a human design also have a human solution.
But,
even if we do reject the idea of a God blessing some with favor, it cannot be
denied that fortune or dumb luck or random chance most certainly have played
more than a small role in making our lives what they are and not
otherwise. Is grace nothing more than
the aspects of our lives that are left entirely to chance?
***
I
recently had lunch with my friend Aaron Roberts, a minister in the United
Church of Christ, a liberal denomination.
I asked him to tell me about what grace means to him. Aaron said something very smart. He explained that our theology of grace is
inversely proportional to our theological anthropology. To translate and unpack that statement, what my
friend was saying was that to the extent that we have a positive view of human
nature and human potential, to the extent that we have a high estimation of
ourselves as human beings, we won’t tend to think of ourselves as in need of
grace. However, if we have a negative
view of human nature and low expectations of human potential, we will see grace
everywhere. It will all be grace.
Where
do Unitarian Universalists fall on this spectrum of holding human nature in
either high or low esteem? Let me give
you a hint. When we include the hymn
“Amazing Grace” in our hymnal, we give our members the option of substituting
the word “soul” for the word “wretch.”
It is written right there on the page.
Our tradition, historically, has had about as high a view of human
nature as it is possible to have. We
have tended to regard ourselves and one another as capable and competent and
good. And, even more than that, we have
historically embraced justice, which to us means the work of refashioning a
world in which the random accident of being born one race, or one gender, or
one nationality, or one socioeconomic class does not foreclose a life of
opportunity or security or happiness.
According
to my friend, such a hopeful theology may not leave a lot of room for grace. There is a very old episode of The Simpsons
in which Bart is asked to say grace before the family dinner. Bart folds his hands together, bows his head,
and says, “Dear God, we paid for all this food ourselves, so thanks for
nothing.” Such a belief in our own
radical self-sufficiency can close us off to grace. Author Marilynne Robinson writes, “It is
[Jesus’] consistent teaching that the comfortable, the confident, [and] the
pious stand in special need of the intervention of grace… The problem is that
we don’t recognize pride or hubris in ourselves, any more than Oedipus did, any
more than Job’s so-called comforters. It
can be so innocuous-seeming a thing as confidence that one is right, is
competent, is clear-sighted, or confidence that one is pious or pure in one’s
motives.” In the story of John Newton
and the composition of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” it is clear that it is the
author of the hymn who is most in need of the intervention of a transforming
grace.
I
wonder. Is there a way to keep our
mostly hopeful view of humanity and still make room for something like grace?
I
want to describe two different ways in which human beings are said to embody
grace. The first way is to be
graceful. We are particularly used to
using the word “graceful” to describe accomplishments in the fields of art and
athletics. Dancers, gymnasts, figure
skaters, second basemen pivoting to complete the double play. Grace is making something very difficult look
smooth and effortless through practice and mastery. It involves poise and sophistication. Being graceful is not an exclusively human
quality. Butterflies, soaring birds, and
running antelope are thought of and referred to as graceful. This meaning mostly refers to a quality of
motion.
There
is another word, though, that is used to describe human beings who are said to
embody grace. That word is “gracious,”
and it is almost exclusively used to describe human beings. Graciousness is an interpersonal
quality. It is the passing of grace
between people. If you are feeling
awkward or unsure, a gracious host can set you at ease. If someone has hurt you, you can graciously
accept their apology, just as you can graciously apologize for hurting
someone. It involves having the capacity
for compassion, courtesy, kindness, and mercy.
Have
you ever done something that made you feel awkward or embarrassed and then
someone said something or did something that put you at ease? Have you ever put your foot in your mouth and
then had someone forgive your insensitivity?
Have you ever messed up in such a way that your relationship with
someone else became estranged, only to have another person graciously refuse to
cut you off entirely? That’s grace. We can recognize the grace that comes from
graciousness.
How
do the workings of grace play out in your life?
I find grace, I experience grace, in the receiving of love. When it comes right down to it, if I’m
completely honest with myself, the love that I receive is not something I can
really say that I’ve earned. And, if I
continue to receive it in the future, it won’t be because of merit.
Our
positive theological anthropology, our positive view of human nature, does not
guarantee that we will never be wretched.
It doesn’t guarantee that our fate in life will be determined by
actuarial tables, by an accounting of our credits and debts, our rising up and
sinking down. No, our positive
anthropology insists that our own wretchedness isn’t the final word, the end of
the story, or our eternal fate. Grace is
many things, and one of the things that it is graciousness, the ability to
redeem and bless each other. As
Unitarian Universalists we are the inheritors of twin theological
traditions. The Universalists spoke of
an all-loving God, ever bestowing the great gift of grace. The Unitarians spoke of a humanity worthy of
love, still worthy of love despite any evidence that may be produced to the
contrary.
May
we be both the givers and receivers of grace.
